


Matters of Blue Space

by BrownieFox



Series: random ideas [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steam Powered Giraffe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, It just kinda happened, avengers rewrite of sorts, but with spg now, current rabbit with she/her, flashbacks throughout, meshing the two universes together, more characters added when they come up, past rabbit w/ he/him, surpring amount of tony pov, various povs, we'll see how far we get
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: Captain America meets up with an old war buddy and also saves New York from an alien invasion.orThe Avengers Movie but with a more convoluted plot and also some steam powered automatons
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Rabbit, Steve Rogers & James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers & Rabbit, Tony Stark & Bruce Banner
Series: random ideas [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/247714
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue - The Set Up

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Who's Timeline Is It Anyway where the timelines of either fandom only matter when I say they do. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is just kind of establishing sort of the world that this mishmash is
> 
> Also why does nobody talk about the cavalcadium and the two totally lesbian scientists that founded it? is there a reason for that?? because i'm totally using a thing or two about the cavalcadium in this fic

Stark Industries had to work hard, a tireless effort, to stay at the top of the game, at the bleeding edge of technology. They fought their competitors off with sticks and guns and bombs and whatever it took to keep their tech secure and safe. It was a kind of war of its own, so while Tony had never been to war he did go through a war of a different kind. A war of fake smiles and words made to cut, where you could never be sure who you could trust. Staying on top like this meant making connections with your own enemies, of being the bearer of your own fake smiles and backhanded compliments and fighting just as much as the others. It was speaking softly and carrying a big stick.

Tony Stark spoke at an ‘outside voice’, you could say, and carried a big stick. 

It was curious, then, how Walter Robotics could essentially not speak at all and still carry a fairly big stick. 

The corporation was never far behind Stark Industries, almost as if they were purposefully lagging behind, content to do moderately well. Whenever Stark Industries came out with something, Walter Robotics would come out with a similar product a few months later. There was never any preamble to releases. Seemingly overnight a gizmo or gadget or whatever would drop and the dedicated fans of Walter Robotics - which was really more of a tech company than a robotics if Tony was being picky - would buy it. The head of Walter Robotics had only been seen in public once all the way back in 1956 when the nine year old orphan Peter A. Walter V inherited all that Peter A. Walter III - his great uncle - left behind when he died, becoming head of the company and keeping that position to the present day. At least, as far as public knowledge went. And also as far as whatever Tony had been able to learn.

And then, of course, there was the Steam Man Band.

Steam-powered automatons, made all the way back in the early 1900's by Colonel Peter A. Walter I. Every so often, there were people who claimed to have seen them, but little proof of such thing, like a kind of robotic bigfoot.

Truly, the rumor mill for Walter Robotics was a beast of its own.

oOo

There were a lot of things Steve struggled with after waking up in the 21st century. The technology was fairly jarring, the streets weren’t what they used to be, and the culture was nearly unrecognizable from when he had lived there so many years ago.

But Steve was smart and could adapt to the technology and was using the new hand-held touch-screen cell phones in no time. The streets were different, there were many new buildings, but in a way the difference made it easier to adapt to the changes in his environment. Like he was in a completely new city, and not his home but moved a few inches to the left. As for the culture, well there were many changes but with time he found the similarities (some good some bad) to the Brooklyn he’d known and he got to know the one he now found himself in.

His biggest hurdle by far was the cruelty of time on the short lifespans of people.

After being thawed out, SHIELD had been kind enough to provide Steve with information regarding his old war buddies - and that was the thing, really, that they were _old_ war buddies, many of them dead, either from parts of the war that Steve hadn’t been there for or from old age. Those that lived often suffered from health complications or memory problems. A lifetime separated Steve from them. 

Bucky wasn’t on the list. It had been a stupid hope in the first place. 

There was only one member of the Howling Commandos lacking from the list, the only one who could’ve greeted Steve also looking like time had stood still for him. When Steve asked Fury about him, Fury had replied that nobody knew what had become of him, brought about by the man’s whereabouts and condition not being as carefully watched and monitored as his human counterparts. 

Steve found himself dearly missing Rabbit.

oOo

_1942_

oOo

Steve crept through the HYDRA facility. He’d found most of the men that had been captured, but Bucky hadn’t been among them. The entire reason for what was borderline a suicide mission. But Bucky had to be here, had to still be alive. If Bucky was dead… Steve didn’t want to even consider it, the mere concept sitting like a weight in his chest. 

Most of the rooms he’d checked so far had either been empty or the only people in them were now very much corpses. He always made sure they were dead, though, not wanting to leave anybody behind if he could help it. 

The supersoldier crept into another room, another one with a table in the center had held a person there, strapped to it, a soft ticking sound that hadn’t been in the other rooms. Even with the law and dark lights, Steve knew right away that the profile wasn’t right, that it wasn’t Bucky on the table, but he approached anyway and set his fingers to find the pulse on the man’s neck. It was cold and hard, smooth in a way that just wasn’t right.

Eyes, one blue and one green, snapped open on the figure, glowing clearly and piercingly. 

“G-g-get me out of here.” The figure whispered. 

Steve unfroze and made short work of the restraints. There was something off about the man. Exactly what it was hadn’t registered just yet, the plain and simple ‘this guys needs help’ winning out against any kind of logical thought process. 

There were a lot of things wrong with the man, but the most notable was that one of his legs and one of his arms were too thin. They looked like they’d been stripped down to the bone, but there was no bone there. It was only when the man stood up and the light from the windows shone on him that it came together what was wrong. 

He wasn’t a man.

He was a machine. 

A tall machine shaped like a man, in US army greens and a bright blue glow coming from his chest. 

“What-” Steve started, but the machine’s head turned and held up a finger of the arm that was stripped down to its bare working. A hiss of steam escaped from his neck. The eyes darted to Steve and nodded in another direction.

“You’re look-ooking for the other p-p-prisoner. This way.” 

Steve didn’t question, didn’t consider that it could be a trap. He just followed behind the machine as it limped down to the hall, passing several rooms and coming to a stop at another laboratory. Much like the metal man had been, Bucky was strapped to a table. His limbs, at least, hadn’t been pulled apart like the machine’s were. Bucky didn’t seem entirely lucid, struggling to open his eyes, but his eyes did open and he recognized Steve and if they weren’t in the middle of an enemy base Steve would’ve cried in relief.

“We have to h-hurry, s-something’s coming.” The machine warned. 

“Rabbit?” Bucky mumbled and the machine nodded. 

“Rabbit? Some kind of code?” Steve asked as he grabbed Bucky, carrying most of the man’s weight. It seemed he wasn’t so out of it as to not be able to walk somewhat, which was a relief. At Steve’s question, Bucky actually made a kind of rough croaking sound that after a second Steve realized was a laugh.

“No, he’s Rabbit.” Bucky pointed to the machine, who lifted a hand and made a gesture like he was tipping a hat he didn’t have. 

“At y-your service.” Rabbit said, slowly moving away from them, clearly eager to get a move on. Steve had to agree; there was no time to waste. As they went, Rabbit got more jittery, a tremor running through his - its? - metal frame. 

“What’s wrong?” Bucky’s words were slurred but clear enough to make out. 

“This place, t-there’s… c-c-c-can’t you feel it?” 

Steve felt more than saw Bucky tense, as much as the exhausted man could. 

“Feel? Feel what?” Steve asked. Both Bucky and Rabbit shook their heads and neither elaborated, just kept going forward. 

The shaking from Rabbit was at its worst as Steve faced down Johann Schmidt. Steve handed Bucky off to the machine as he walked out across the rickety metal bridge to meet the man headon, blood boiling in his veins and knowing that this was the man responsible for whatever Bucky had been through, whatever reason he had been strapped to that table, responsible for the other dead bodies that Steve had come across. 

Rabbit glared at the two Nazis, stripped arm cradled close to his chest. 

After the two left - though it was more like running away in Steve’s opinion - the three of them made a mad dash to get out of the base. 

They made it out and met up with the other men that Steve had freed. Apparently they’d managed to get their hands on the HYDRA tech and were making quick work on the enemy. Steve shoved Bucky into one of the tanks that their allies had commandeered. When they were far enough away from the base to be considered ‘safe’, everybody on high alert for whether or not they were being followed. Injuries were patched up enough to hopefully make it to the American encampment. 

Steve found Bucky outside of the tank, looking better than when he’d last seen him. He was rummaging around an open hatch of the tank with Rabbit leaning on the side, his good hand fiddling with the torn apart arm.

“How about this one?” Bucky held up a piece of metal. Rabbit took it from him, turning it over in his hands, and then handing it back to Bucky. 

“N-no, too big, won’t sh-shape easily.” The machine replied. “I-I-I’ll just ask for something to be s-s-s-s-ent over when we get to c-camp.” When Rabbit noticed Steve approaching, he quickly straightened up. It caught Bucky’s attention, who turned to look at Steve. And finally, Steve was rewarded for his mission with Bucky’s grin. 

“Was wondering where you got off to. At ease, Rabbit, it’s just Steve.” Bucky stood up, wiping his hands on his shirt. At some point he’d acquired one of the HYDRA guns and it was now slung over his shoulder. Rabbit did in fact ease out of his tense stance, fiddling with his arm once more, though he kept glancing up and looking at Steve. 

“How are you feeling?” Steve asked after giving Bucky a hug. 

“Fine, better than some of the others.” Bucky nodded over to the other tank, which had become a medical station of sorts. Someone was going through and deciding who wasn’t fit enough to walk and would have to ride back to camp in the tanks and who would be fine until then. He also nodded over to Rabbit. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Steve asked. Bucky’s expression soured for a second before leveling back off as Rabbit put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Right, you don’t know.” Bucky said, more to himself than to Steve. “Rabbit is completely sentient, Steve, you can ask him yourself.” 

“Of course. Rabbit, will you be okay?” Steve corrected himself. The machine blinked at him for a second.

“W-well, I th-thought you were supposed to g-g-get money by joining the a-a-a-army, not pay an arm and-and a leg.” Rabbit said with a grin. Bucky playfully hit the robot’s arm while Steve found himself chuckling. “B-but I’ll b-be fine, it’s mo-ostly just my plating.” 

“I’ve got to admit, I’ve never seen anything like you. Are you one of Mr. Stark’s creations?” Steve was fairly sure that Howard was nowhere close to this kind of technology, but he was also the only one Steve could think of that could possibly make it. Bucky scowled again, this time taking out a few cigarettes and handing to the smirking Rabbit. 

“Why’d you have to say that?” Bucky said sullenly. Steve and Rabbit laughed.

oOo

_2010_

oOo

Rabbit looked out of the windows of Walter Mansion, feeling some kind of shiver run through her metal skeleton. 

Something was coming.


	2. Chapter 1 - Irradiated California

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which tesseract energy shows up in three places when it should only show up in two

Stark Tower was a huge, glaringly-obvious difference between the New York Steve used to know and the one he was now in.

Steve had thought about meeting Tony Stark before. Not in some kind of fan-like awe-struck hope, just in a kind of curiosity. Steve had known Howard at one point, all those years ago (it felt like just a _year ago)_ , and though he had little way of knowing what kind of man Howard had become, just of the legacy that he’d left behind, he wondered how much of the man he'd once known he'd be able to find in Tony. Would Tony be like Howard, brimming with ideas and almost moving from one project to the next too fast for anything to get done? 

He’d never thought they’d meet because they were being called to save Earth. 

Now of course Steve didn’t live under a rock (though he still felt a kind of disconnect between current events and himself), he knew about the whole fiasco of Tony Stark going missing, then popping back up, then revealing that he was a super hero named Iron Man. He’d watched news stations comment on how it almost reminded them of some 'Commander Cosmo' guy that was after Steve’s time. Apparently Steve had only been the first of several other heroes over the past few decades. 

There were others gathered in the tower. Some of their names sounded familiar, but not enough for Steve to place where he’d heard them from. One was a red-haired woman in a black suit that apparently was actually a part of SHIELD, not just called in for this event. The other was an unassuming looking man who was busying himself with something in Tony’s lab. Tony himself was in the same room, eating some blueberries, feet kicked up on a table as he read through something. Steve felt distinctly out of place. 

He kept on pacing back and forth in the lab. For the past year he’d had a feeling of restlessness growing in him, probably a side-effect of being ripped right from the thick of war back into civilian life without even the trip back home to try and adjust. And now here he was, so close to finally getting some action, to doing some good, to doing  _ anything  _ other than just feeling out of place , and he was just sitting in a lab with nothing to do.

“I thought we were supposed to be hunting down the guy who stole this tesseract thing?” Steve said out loud eventually. 

“Look Star-Spangled man, it’s a bit more complicated than just typing tesseract into Google Earth.” Tony said. Steve rolled his eyes. 

“What Tony means to say is that we need to locate him first.” The SHIELD agent, Natasha Romanov if Steve recalled correctly, said before Steve could give a retort. 

“Well, the good news is that we won’t have to wait any longer,” The scientist, Dr. Banner, sat back from the screens he’d been working with, running a hand through his hair, “I’ve finished running the data for the radioactivity of the tesseract and have used SHIELD’s satellites to find out where the theif might be."

“If there’s good news there’s gotta be bad news.” Tony put the screen he’d been reading from down, folding his arms. “Give it to us straight Bruce, what went wrong?” 

Dr. Banner ran another hand through his hair, tapping something, and then a holographic model of the Earth was projected up into the center of the room, the rest of the lights dimming in order to make the projection easier to see. Dr. Banner walked over to the display, zooming in on one spot that was lit up yellow to contrast the blue hues of the globe.

“Well, there’s a significant amount of radiation right here, which makes sense. This was where the tesseract was held before it was stolen, so naturally it accumulated a lot of the energy. And then over here,” Dr. Banner moved the display around until he landed on somewhere in Germany, “Has recently started to accumulate energy, so we can assume that for whatever reason our culprit has stopped here.”

“That seems pretty cut and dry…” Steve observed, though he could sense the ‘but’ that was about to enter this. 

“But,” Dr. Banner moved the screen to the United States, zooming in to California, “There’s also a highly dense and concentrated spot of the same energy right here. I don’t think it’s where the tesseract is now being kept, as it’d still have a smaller reading than where SHIELD had been keeping it. I’m… not sure what we’re looking at here.” Dr. Banner admitted. 

“It’s like there was another tesseract that was being kept there.” Natasha said, stepping closer to the display and zooming it in further.

“It’s like there was another tesseract that was being kept there for much longer than we’ve had ours.” Tony corrected. The display was now zoomed in enough to see that the center of the irradiated zone was some kind of mansion with acres of land around it, presumably owned by whoever also owned the mansion.

Again, Steve was no idiot. He’d seen pictures of the tesseract. He could remember what he’d seen facing off against the Red Skull, the blue cube that had seemed to disintegrate the man just by holding it. And all the weapons that had been created using its energy. Steve felt a chill run down his spine at the implications. If somebody had had access to that kind of power for years and years, who knew what kind of weapons they could’ve produced.

“So the tesseract is in Germany and the whatever this is,” Natasha gestured vaguely to the mysterious spot, “Is all the way over here. How do we know that one of these isn’t supposed to be a distraction?” 

“Could he do that?” Steve asked, looking at the others. Both Dr. Banner and Tony shrugged.

“Honestly? No idea. We don’t know anything about this man other than that he apparently stole the tesseract by using it as a portal. We also don’t yet have an in depth understand of the tesseract, so…” Tony shrugged again. 

“Well then it’s a good thing there’s four of you.” 

Steve spun around, fists raised on instinct. Director Fury seemed to emerge straight from the shadows, hands clasped behind his back and the glare that never left his face still fixed there. The lights in the room brightened once more, though the projection stayed up. 

“I’m not-” Dr. Banner started.

“I’ll partner up with The Amazing Hulk over here. Steve, you can take Black Widow.” Tony slung his arm over Dr. Banner’s shoulders. Steve raised his eyebrows and looked at Director Fury. The man was almost impossible to read, but he didn’t look any more disapproving of Tony than he usually did. Instead he just walked to the center of the room. The Globe had zoomed out enough to see the entire thing again. The Director’s one good eyes darted across it, thought process impossible to track. 

“Natasha and Steve, I want you two to head to Germany right away. Tony and Bruce, find out what’s been going on in California.” Director Fury ordered. 

“Uh, Sir, how do we know that the thief will still be in Germany by the time we arrive?” Steve asked. Director Fury turned his focus to him.

“We can only hope he’s not in the mood to be a moving target. But if it’s travel time you’re worried about, I can assure you SHIELD’s tech will shorten it considerably.” Director Fury replied. Steve suppressed a frown. It wasn’t so much that he doubted that, but there was something about this all that didn’t feel right. 

But he also knew that standing around, staying here, wouldn’t be doing anybody any help, and he’d spent the last year unable to do anything. 

“Alright, let’s go.” 

oOo

“I agreed to help do some research, use some of my technical prowess. I did  _ not  _ agree to actually step into the danger - and before you say anything, it’s not because of  _ my  _ own safety, I’m worried about everybody else.” 

“You worry too much. Don’t you think I thought about the Jolly Green Giant ahead of time?” Tony asked. He’d been listening to Bruce whine about being forced to check out the tesseract irradiated mansion for the past few miles. In the spirit of being inconspicuous, when Tony and Bruce had been dropped off by Shield in California, it had been some ways away from the spot with them expected to walk the rest of the way. Bruce was equipped with something that would pick up reading the closer they got to the mansion and Tony, though the entire Ironman suit was far too heavy and complex to take with him, he did have a suitcase carrying the gauntlets incase something went south on their recon mission.

Tony had listened to Bruce’s groaning and moaning about being there for most of the walk. 

“Odd as it might sound, I actually did doubt that.” Bruce said.

“Listen, I’ve got it handled. We run into any trouble, you make a break for it instead of breaking something and I’ll whip out these bad boys,” Tony lifted his suitcase and jiggled it, “And the trouble will be running from us.” Tony tilted his head forward so he could look Bruce in the eyes without the darkened lenses of his sunglasses in the way, grinning. At first Bruce blinked a bit, and then returned Tony’s smile. 

“Any clue what we might be looking at here?” Bruce asked, the first thing he’d said that wasn’t about how extremely upset he was about the situation. 

“Not much more than you. Considering what Dr. Selvig’s managed to glean in his research, we basically know that it’s a cube and it’s blue.” Tony rolled his eyes. “I mean, there’s a lot of stuff about the fluxuations in its energy. It started getting weird right before our Oceans One got through, but we don’t know anymore than back in my dad’s days.” 

“Since your dad’s days?” Bruce repeated, raising his eyebrows. 

“Oh yeah, you probably haven’t heard. Selvig matched up the energy from the tesseract to the energy found in those weapons we got from the Nazi’s way back during Cap’s glory days. Dad always had theories about the source of the energy, and it was never found in any weapons produced after World War II, but I guess now we know, so mystery solved.” Tony explained. 

“I wonder if Steve would have any kind of interesting input. He worked closely with tech created by the tesseract before, perhaps he’ll know something about what we’re up against.” Bruce mused. 

“After we handle this, we’ll hit up the Star-Spangled Man With a Plan.” Tony put his hand out and with a small huff of laughter Bruce shook on it. 

“So… we’re the man with the plan now?” Bruce smiled. Tony patted Bruce’s back. 

“There might be humor left in you.” Tony commented and Bruce gave a full laugh this time, shaking his head. Before anything else could be said between the two men, the device Bruce had taken along started beeping. They paused their walking as Bruce pulled it out, looking over the data it’d collected.

“Well, we’re officially within the bounds of the tesseract radiation.” Bruce reported, showing the results to Tony. “... this isn’t going to give us tumors or anything, will it? The energy didn’t really seem harmful, just strong or powerful.”

“None of Selvig’s  _ or  _ my dad’s research pointed towards any kind of negative side-effects - unless you count being shot by a tesseract-fueled weapon a side-effect - of just being within the energy field.” Tony recalled. He’d gone over his dad’s notes on the weird Nazi weapons that Captain America had brought back with him when he’d saved the 107th. Most of them had been taken by Peggy Carter, but some of them remained in Stark possession. They still worked perfectly, but without their power-cores - which neither Stark had managed to replicate - they were just scrap metal. 

“And there’s the mansion.” Bruce pointed with the device - quickly increasing in beeping - to the building they were heading for. 

Perhaps mansion wasn’t the right word for it. It had what could really only be called a steam-punk kind of aesthetic, all shiny and metallic. There were big and elaborate windows, a large fence too tall to climb surrounding the large property. The property itself, from what Tony could see without standing on Bruce’s shoulders, was either fairly sparse as far as vegetations went or the majority of the trees were very pretty short, only a few seen over the fence. 

When the two of them reached the closed cast-iron gate that lead up the driveway, the beeping of Bruce’s device was much less a beep and more a constant whine, and Bruce’s data had shown that it would only get worse once they made it to the nexus of the energy: the mansion itself. 

There was something familiar about the mansion, in a vague sort of way that Tony couldn’t put his finger on. He looked up at the two metal statues that stood, almost like guardians, over the metal gate. They looked like horse heads, but only if the sculptor had never seen horses and had sculpted it while somebody who had seen a horse only once was describing it to them. 

“Well, now what?” Bruce looked at Tony. Tony stepped up to the gate, hand raised.

“We knock.” 


	3. Chapter 2 - Science Bros Almost Start A Fight

They did, indeed, try knocking on the gate. For their trouble, they were rewarded with the sound of metal ringing after somebody had hit it by, say, knocking their knuckles on it.

“Well, no choice,” Tony put his suitcase on the ground and unclipped the clasp.

“Hey, we’re not blowing anything up.” Bruce put his foot on top of the suitcase before Tony could open it.

“We came all the way here, and you want to turn around without even collecting data from the source?” Tony complained, gesturing to the mansion.

“I never said that.” Bruce leaned down and reclipped the clasp of the suitcase, picking it up. And threw it over the fence. “Oh no, we dropped our suitcase on the other side of the fence, how ever will we get it back?”

“Oh hey rich guy who lives here with dangerous weapons, is it okay if we hop this to grab our stuff?” Tony cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke at just barely above a speaking voice. When nobody replied, Tony smirked at Bruce, shrugging. “Well, that didn’t sound like a no.”

Tony ended up needing a hand from Bruce to get far enough up to grab one of the more horizontal bars. Bruce was surprisingly good at climbing metal fences and was over and on the other side just as Tony reached the top. Bruce landed with thud on the other side, straightening up and brushes dirt off of his jeans. When he looked up and saw the impressed look that Tony was giving him, he just crossed his arms looking very pleased with himself.

“When you’re running from the law, you get pretty good at climbing things really quickly.” Bruce explained. 

Tony moved to jump down to the other side of the fence. Before he could, however, the entire fence started to move. It didn’t scare Tony, per se, but the look he gave Bruce was one that screamed ‘remember the plan of run while I beat up baddies’, and Bruce shoved the suitcase over towards the side that Tony’s gate was swinging towards. Bruce himself darted to hide in the shadows behind the fence. 

A car pulled up the driveway. At first, Tony thought it hadn’t seen them, but then it stopped a few feet from the gate - which swung closed behind the car, Tony still on top - and a man stepped out of it, hands on his hips.

“You look a little old to be taking dares.” The man said. He was wearing a bandana with multicolored dreads flowing out the back. His outfit was composed of various grays and blacks, and on the chest was a logo featuring a W and an R right next to each other. Tony narrowed his eyes at it. Yeah, he knew that logo. 

“Sorry, we dropped our-” Bruce came over, hands held in front of him placatingly, while Tony finally got off of the fence, grabbing his suitcase and fiddling with the latch. 

“No, no you didn’t. They never ‘just dropped their backpack’ or ‘just dropped their pen’ or ‘I don’t know how my cat got all the way out here’.” The man did not look amused. 

“We’re door-to-door salesman?” Tony tried, less because he thought the guy would buy it and more because he couldn’t stop himself. 

“Not another door even close to here, all the regulars know better, and the summer new-guys aren’t here yet.” Dreads shot it down right away. “And even then, I’m not sure why Tony Stark would be doing summer sales.” 

“Oh, so you recognize me?” Tony turned about like he was posing for the man. Dreads rolled his eyes. 

“I’m not blind.” The guys replied. “I am curious what brings you here, though.” Tony shared a look with Bruce, who gave the most minute shake of his head. Alright, now showing what they know just yet. Which was harder than it seemed considering that Tony could still faintly hear the whining of Bruce’s detector, wrapped up in his jacket in an effort to silence it. So Tony faced the guy headon, looking him in the eyes, taking on a less relaxed body language. 

“I’ve gotta say, Walter Robotics must pay its employees better than I thought.” Tony said. Finally, Dread’s expression changed. Except, instead of looking found out, he looked surprised. He looked back at the mansion, then at Tony, the edge of his mouth twitching up until a short laugh came out of him.

“You think this is my house?” The guy repeated. By now Bruce had made his way to standing next to Tony, if slightly behind him. 

“... not so much anymore.” Tony admitted, hand tightening on his suitcase. The sound of the device was starting to get to him.

“Here I thought you were trying to find out what Six was working on or something.” Dreads said. He looked between Bruce and Tony, then sighed, “Look, just, get off the property, and-” 

Before he could finish whatever the ‘and’ was, the front door to the mansion opened. Dreads tensed up as something called out to him. 

“Steve, did you get the oil?” The man shouted over to Dreads. “Oh, did you find some friends? Do you  _ have  _ friends?”

“The Spine, go back inside!” Steve shouted back. 

“Did you get the oil?” The man - the… spine? - shouted again, this time leave the doorway and walking towards them. “Six can’t finish Rabbit’s repairs without it.”

“The Spine,” Steve repeated, but the sun was bright and clear and the damage was done. Bruce gasped and Tony’s eyebrows shot up to the top of his head.

What he had first taken to be a man looked to be just as much toaster as man. It was dressed in rather dapper black and red clothes, but that seemed secondary compared to what was in said clothes. It was silver, as shiny and metallic of the house itself. Its movements as it made its way down the driveway were less than smooth, the pace consistent throughout but each step odd, like a weird kind of limp almost. As the robot drew closer, Steve sighed again and ran a hand down his face. 

“Yes, the Spine, I got the oil.” Steve said. The Spine stopped next to Steve, looking at Tony and Bruce with curiosity. At that distance, Tony could see the smooth plates of close-fitted metal that made up the face, the neck consisting of metal overlapping. Its ‘eyes’ were a bright and glowing green. 

The shrieking of the device was even louder, a fact that took a second to sink in. Once it did, though, Tony’s heart skipped a beat at the implication and dropped the suitcase, unlatching it in a second a pulling one of his gauntlets out. It was on his hand in a matter of seconds, designed to quickly mold to his arm. He surged back to his full height, hand outstretched with the palm of his gauntlet aimed at the machine and the man. In the seconds he’d spent getting his tech on, the robot had shoved the human behind him and had stretched his arm out much like Tony himself. 

“Good afternoon to you too sir.” The robot said, a faintest ring of metal in his voice but for the most part startlingly human sounding. 

“Tony,” Bruce put a hand on Tony’s shoulder, “Let’s not do something we’re going to regret.” 

“Mind sharing with the class what’s in your little toy here?” Tony asked Steve, shrugging off Bruce’s hand. 

“He doesn’t have to tell you anything, and I suggest you listen to your friend there.” The robot said. It didn’t waver, still a statue with the exception of a plume of steam that came from the machine’s back.

“There’s something dangerous in that thing, and I’m not taking any chances.” Tony stood his ground. 

“Let’s just talk about this.” Steve suggested, trying to get around the robot, who kept moving to keep itself between Steve and Tony. “The Spine, put your arm down.” 

“He’s pointing a weapon at us.” The robot reminded Steve. 

“The Spine, put your arm  _ down,”  _ Steve repeated, “Don’t make me shut you down.”

The Spine glared at Tony and Bruce but slowly lowered his arm in several jerky movements while a jet of either smoke or steam came out of the sides of his necks. Tony was planning to keep his own weapon up, but Bruce put his hand on Tony’s arm and forced it down. Tony grumbled and let it fall to his side, but didn’t take it off. Bruce picked up the suitcase, closing it with the second gauntlet still inside. 

“So… I guess we’ll start with introductions. I’m Steve Negrete.” Negrete put his hand out for a shake. He had to slip it from around the side of the robot, who still refused to let Steve get past him. 

“Tony Stark, but you knew that.” Tony didn’t shake the hand. 

“Bruce Banner.” Bruce did shake the offered hand and Negrete looked surprised but didn’t comment on it. 

“What brings two brilliant minds like you two to try and pretend to be door-to-door salesman at Walter Manor?” Negrete didn’t waste anymore time beating around the bush. 

“Walter Manor? Like Peter A. Walter V?” Bruce asked. Negrete nodded slowly. 

“You really didn’t know that. Then why did you come here and why were you about to blow up the Spine?” Negrete seemed even more wary. 

“How about you tell us what’s in that robot first?” Tony shot right back, but Bruce brushed past him, the device - which was still shrieking - in his hand and held out to Negrete. The robot took it first, looking it over, and then passed it back to Negrete. 

“We’re looking for the source of some possibly dangerous radiation. There were a couple other spots that others are looking into, but this one was by far the most dense.” Bruce said. While Negrete looked over the device, the robot’s eyes narrowed at Bruce’s words. 

“You found blue matter somewhere else?” The robot said. 

“So you are run on tesseract energy?” Tony said instead of replying and the robot’s arm flinched like he’d been about to raise it again but had stopped himself at the last second. Negrete was putting the device near the robot and then taking it away. With how dense the area they were in already was with the radiation, the difference wasn’t drastic, but it was just barely enough to be noticable. 

“Six is going to want to know about this.” Negrete passed the device back to Bruce. “Come on in.”

“And take your weapon off.” The robot added. 

“Yeah, the weapon has to come off.” Negrete agreed.

Well, they did come here to find out what was up with the energy, Tony supposed. And he’d still have the gauntlets within arm’s reach, and if worst really did come to worst, as loathe as he was admit it, he did have a big green and angry friend who could bail them out. Reluctantly, Tony took off the gauntlet, putting it back in the case, and the robot finally stopped being a human-shaped wall between the scientists and the Walter Robotics worker.

oOo

Well, Steve, Natasha, and SHIELD now knew a few things about the thief.

He was some guy named Loki, he gave off some pretty strong dictator vibes that Steve did not appreciate in the slightest, he didn’t have the tesseract on him anymore, and he gave in way too easily. 

“Any news from the other two yet?” Steve asked Fury as the boarded the Helicarrier, Loki looking far too smug for being handcuffed and having his weapons taken from him. 

“They haven’t checked in yet, but their tracker is still live. They’ve been told not to engage in any kind of fighting unless it’s the only option.” Fury said. 

“Should we meet up with them?” Natasha entered the conversation. 

“Our first priority is getting Loki to a secure facility. Banner and Stark can handle their own.” Steve and Natasha nodded and both walked off towards the cells.

Natasha looked to Steve, regarding him for a moment, like there was something she wanted to say. 

In the end, she kept it to herself. 


	4. Chapter 3 - Walter Manor

“Alright, if you want to make it out of here alive, don’t wander off, definitely don’t sit down in any chairs, don’t eat anything, and for the love of God stay with me.” Negrete instructed as they entered the manor, carrying a plastic bag he’d grabbed from his car. 

“Is that a threat?” Bruce asked. 

“No, it’s for your own good and you’re just going to have to trust me on that one.” Negrete informed him. 

The robot still stood between the two scientists and the other man. They could see its back now, and it made it even clearer than the machine wasn’t human considering the spikes coming out from his back right along his spine and looking almost like smokestacks.There was also a brilliant blue glow running right along either side of its spine which only served to make Tony believe even more that the robot was run off of tesseract energy.

“So, are these puppies gonna be hitting markets next spring or what?” Tony asked, and his comment got him another glare from the robot. Negrete looked back, but exchanged some kind of look with the robot instead of turning his attention to Tony. 

“You want to take this one, the Spine?” Negrete asked. The robot stood a little straighter, turning around and walking backwards while facing Bruce and Tony.

“I am the Spine, named for my titanium-alloy spine. That’s-” The Spine had started to look more happy, but had cut itself off abruptly as if just remembering it didn’t like Tony and Bruce. Tony raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment on it. “That’s just how I got my name. I was created by Colonel Peter A. Walter I all the way back in 1896.”

“Wait,” Tony said, looking at the robot closely. It didn’t really show any wear or tear, in fact it looked remarkably clean and and wellkept, not at all over a century old. But a puff of steam came off its back as if to support its claim, and Tony said unable to stop himself, “As in Colonel Walter’s Steam Man Band?”

“The very same.” The Spine tipped its hat to Tony and Bruce, a crooked kind of half smile on his face.

“You’re just keeping a priceless antique like this walking around?” Tony asked Negrete. “It could break down any minute!” 

“Hey, I don’t break down that often!” The Spine said defensively.

“Yeah, you just get overloaded every other song.” Negrete teased. The Spine gave the man one of the most hurt and offended looks Tony had ever seen.

“At least I’m not Rabbit!” The Spine retorted. 

“Sure, sure.” Negrete laughed. A big puff of steam came out of the automaton.

“Are the rumors true then?” Tony asked. 

“Which ones?” Negrete asked. 

“It’s sentient, isn’t it.” Bruce finished Tony’s thought, clearly having also heard the rumors and realized the same thing that Tony had. 

“For believing he’s a sentient being, you sure aren’t treating him like he is.” Negrete commented. 

“Well, I mean,” Bruce floundered, trying to defend himself, “It’s- I mean, he’s, uh,” 

“Don’t hurt yourself there, Doctor.” Negrete said, snickering.

“You’re going to have to forgive me if I’m not so quick to believe that.” Tony folded his arms, looking the robot up and down. Sure it looked fancy, but there was no proof that it was as old as it said it was, and even if it was from the original Steam Man Band that just made it even harder to believe it was a sentient being. Sure it was being run by some kind of super powerful tesseract energy, but it wasn’t like the WWII Nazi weapons had been sentient, just dangerous.

“I can assure you, I am fully sentient.” The Spine said. 

“Unless you’ve been programmed to say that.” Tony pointed out. 

“Tony, I’m sure they’ve conducted at least one turing test, probably more.” Bruce defended Negrete. 

“Uh, actually,” Negrete said slowly.

“You haven’t even tested its sentience?!” Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Hey, you live here for a few years and you’ll get what I mean! I have no doubt in my mind he’s sentient.” Negrete said.

“Five once tried to conduct some tests, but he never really finished them. He said there was no way father would’ve programmed us to be so annoying.” The Spine supplied. 

“That sounds about right.” Negrete agreed. 

Conversation stilted while they descended a flight of stairs. Tony took the time to compose and send a quick message to the other half of the team, informing them that he and Bruce were safe, inside the manor, and were close to getting some concrete answers. Steve sent one back that he and Natasha had secured the thief - some guy named Loki - but that they still didn’t have the tesseract. Tony handed the message to Bruce, who swore under his breath and shook his head. 

At the bottom of the stairs, they came to a large room. Most of it was cut off by a door and walls made of glass. On the other side of the glass was something that looked like a weird amalgamation of mad scientist’s lab, hospital room, and workshop. There was a chair similar to what you’d see at the dentist’s, and placed in it was another automaton. It was holding some kind of instrument in its hands, the mouthpiece placed in its mouth while its fingers danced along the piano-like keys. Sitting in a chair near the automaton was a man wearing a mask - not dissimilar to a welding mask - and white coveralls, holding himself a guitar and making strumming motions though Tony couldn’t hear the sounds coming from the man nor the robot. A second man in a white lab coat and mask was holding some kind of gaming device, leaning against a wall and seeming almost bored, though it was hard to tell with the mask concealing his expressions.

Negrete strode up to the glass and knocked on it, all attention turning to him. The robot spat out the mouthpiece of its instrument and looked like it was shouting something, waving a hand high in the air. The man next to it pushed the arm down and waggled his finger at the robot, who pouted. The man who had been leaning up against the wall pushed off of it and made a shooing motion.

“Step off to the side of the door.” Negrete informed them, doing so himself. Lab Coat undid some locks on the door and slipped out, closing it behind him. In the split second the door was open, the robot took its chance to throw its arm up and wave again, the words “-EL AND I ARE WORKING ON-” the only snippet that was able to make it through in time. 

“Good, you got the oil.” Lab Coat said, taking the plastic bag from Negrete. “Much longer and I think Rabbit would combust.” 

“At least it’s not the Jon.” The Spine offered and Lab Coat shook his head..

“Not sure that would be much better.” The man’s tone was light in contradiction to his apparent frustration. “I must say, I wasn’t prepared for guests today, much less by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner themselves. Wonderful to meet you, though I’d expected you to make a trip sooner.” He stuck a pale hand out to the two of them. Bruce shook it right away, and after a moment’s hesitation Tony followed suit. 

“And you are?” Tony asked.

“Right, of course, where are my manors. Suppose that’s what happens when you don’t leave home enough.” The man gave a completely unnecessary bow. “Peter A. Walter the Sixth, at your service. Or perhaps you came here to be at my service today? Yes, we still haven’t talked about the nature of this impromptu visit yet, have we?”

“Uh, Six?” Negrete said before Tony or Walter could reply, pointing into the mad lab portion of the room where the automaton seemed to be trying to climb out of the chair but being held down by the guitar man. The Spine stomped over to the door, swinging it open.

“Rabbit, I can listen to your song when you’re done being fixed up!” He shouted in.

“But the Spine, it’s turning out really good, and the beginning part kind of goes like-”

“Hey, Six, I could use some help here!” Guitar called out for help.

“Well, there’ll be plenty of time once I get Rabbit’s gears all re-oiled. This shouldn’t take long. Feel free to sit on the floor, that should be safe.” And with that Walter slipped back into the room, oil in hand.

oOo

They waited outside the room for about 45 minutes. The Spine positioned itself next to the door, back to the other robot so that no matter how it tried to get his attention, it didn’t notice. Its head was tilted down enough that its eyes were hidden by its hat, and other than the occasional puff of steam, it didn’t move. Negrete had pulled out his phone and sat down on the floor.

Both Tony and Bruce stood right in front of the glass wall, watching Peter A. Walter the Sixth - who Tony assumed was Peter A. Walter V’s son or something - as he oiled the various joints and mechanism in the machine. Guitar Man helped move the limbs of the robot around as well as helping with the oiling. Before they had started the tedious process, the automaton had gone completely still in the chair. During one point, they opened the chest part of the robot and brilliant bright blue light filled the room, though they closed it back up soon after. 

Tony knew that must be what they were here for.

When he was done, the two men sat back and after a moment the automaton sat up on its own, giving them a thumbs up. The last thing they did before coming back out was put a third automaton which Tony hadn’t noticed until then and put it on the chair. 

“Okay, so it kind of s-starts off slow, but then it b-b-builds up-” The automaton the Spine had called Rabbit was talking as soon as it was through the door.

“I’m tagging you in.” Guitar said, slapping a hand on Negrete’s shoulder for emphasis. 

“Why don’t we head up to an office to chat.” Walter suggested, already heading up to the stairs. He kept his lab coat on, but he took off his mask, carrying it in his hands. Tony and Bruce followed after.

“Some nice assistants you have there.” Tony commented. 

“Steve and Michael?” Walter looked over his shoulder and threw his head back and laughed. “Oh that’s a good one! No, Steve and Michael aren’t really my assistants. I mean, they’ve picked up some things about how to deal with malfunctions, but Chelsea and Camille are my assistants. You haven’t met them yet, have you? I’m call them in before you leave, you’ll love them.” 

Walter’s office was rather plain looking, a thin layer of dust on everything. Walter swept his arm over the desk, sending up a cloud of the dust. He gave the two chairs in front of the desk a scrutinizing look before telling Tony and Bruce that, yes, they could sit down in the chairs. 

“So, what brings you here today?” Walter asked, clasping his hands together and setting his elbows on the table, looking at the expectantly.

“Well, Mr. Walter-” 

“Please, Peter or Six will do fine. Mr. Walter was my father, and most the time he went by dad or Five.” Six waved the name off.

“Right. Six, we came because your mansion here seemed to be at the center of a rather dangerous energy field.” Tony decided to get right to the point. 

“Oh, is that all? Well, don’t worry about it, we here at Walter Manor have that well under control. Now, did you want to meet Chelsea and Camille? I’m sure they’ll be excited to get the chance to talk with both of you.” Six smiled, seeming to think that was where it would end. Bruce scooted a little closer in his chair. 

“Six, sir, perhaps it would help if we told you how we found out about this energy around your manor?” That caught Six’s attention, head tilting a bit to the side in curiosity. 

“I guess it was too much to hope you were just looking out for a fellow scientist.” Six commented. Bruce looked at Tony, as if waiting for Tony to stop him, but Tony didn’t look for SHIELD, so really it was SHIELD’s fault expecting them to keep this a secret. They hadn’t even technically been ordered not to tell people, it had just kind of been implied with the entire secret nature of the organization.

“Last night, an extremely dangerous object known as the tesseract was stolen. It gives off the same kind of radiation that is around your mansion.” 

Oh yeah, they had his attention now.

Six stood out of his chair, looking Bruce and Tony in the eyes as if trying to see if they were tricking him and then shook his head, pacing back and forth behind his desk, a hand gripping his chin.

“Oh, that’s no good, that’s no good at all. Blue matter isn’t as unpredictable as green matter, but if anything that would make it all the more dangerous in the wrong hands - both to themselves and to others.” Six was clearly talking more to himself than he was to them, but both Bruce and Tony stood up. 

“We need to know everything you know about this thing.” Tony demanded. Six shook his head.

“Yeah, I’m not giving family secrets out like candy. But I can’t just ignore some blue matter in the wrong hands. I could call the Brown Suits, ugh, but I don’t know if they’d be able to get here in time…” Six continued to mutter to himself, running a hand through his hair and then down his face. All at once he rounded on Tony and Bruce,hands slamming down on the table, brown eyes darting from one face to the next. “You can’t be too careful with blue matter, okay? It’s literally what makes up space itself. So you can’t try and tinker at all with them, okay?”

“What?” Tony asked, not on the page?

“Okay?” Six insisted.

“Y-yeah, okay, okay.” Bruce said. Six nodded, backing off.

“Good. Well, the Jon still needs to be fixed up, but Rabbit and the Spine should be able to take care of it themselves.” 

Which was how Bruce and Tony found themselves back outside the manor, but now with two robots. 


	5. Chapter 4 - Reunion

"So… do you speak binary?”

Bruce elbowed Tony sharply in the ribs. Tony didn’t regret what he’d said in the slightest. The two robots were walking just behind Tony and Bruce, their movements ‘incorrect’ in a way that was hard for Tony to put his finger on. Rabbit was a lot more feminine in build than the Spine, wearing a short dress and a top hat with goggles on the brim. Apparently Walter I had a thing for the steampunk aesthetic - or maybe it was just normal back in the olden days?

“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, wh-wh-what’s it to you?” Rabbit asked, arms folded. 

“Just trying to make conversation.” Tony shrugged.

“Y-y-you don’t even think we’re sentient.” Rabbit sniffed. 

“She’s got a point there.” Spine agreed. 

“Oh come on, I think I can be a little suspicious! Back in 1899-”

“1896,” Rabbit corrected.

“I don’t think they even knew what a computer was, much less an AI!” Tony pointed out. Rabbit stuck its tongue out at Tony - a pale blue bit of plastic.

“Well maybe an i-i-idiot like you wouldn’t know!” Rabbit shot back. “But pappy did and he made-made us, not you!” 

“So, we go and try to investigate some kind weird energy, and instead we get no answers and two annoying robots who we can’t even try to figure out how they work since they probably have some kind of electronic rape whistle in them.” Tony grumbled. He was a little less than thrilled with how things had gone. Under normal circumstances, coming across robots run off of such an amazing powersource would’ve been a dream come true. But when you couldn’t actually investigate that powersource, it just hung tantilizingly close, that was actual torture. Not to mention, though it was clear that the Walter family had some kind of understanding of the ‘blue matter’, they’d been rushed out so fast that all they got what the off-handed comment about it being related to space. 

“Yeah, the ‘rape whistle’ is I cut your ha-a-and off.” Rabbit went on.

“Rabbit, that’s enough.” The Spine put a hand on Rabbit’s shoulder. 

“I thought you were musical robots?” Bruce asked, joining in the Spine’s efforts to diffuse the tension in the group as they walked to where the fancy SHIELD jet was waiting for them.

“We are, but we’re also capable of fighting,” The Spine said, “Though there have been some… hiccups, you could say, with our performances.” 

“What kind of hiccups?” Bruce asked politely. Tony rolled his eyes.

“Performing in front of large crowds can be difficult. We’ve mostly been busking as of late.” Was all the explanation that the Spine gave.

“And how has that been?”

“Are you really going to just walk about music stuff?” Tony complained.

“Listen, I’m not th-th-thrilled to be here either, we have songs to be working-ing on.” Rabbit snapped, arms folded. “Point us towards the blue matter and w-w-we’ll be out of your hair.” 

“If only it were that easy. Who knows, maybe once we find the tesseract, mister Six will be so thankful he’ll let me weld your mouth shut.” Tony threatened. 

“Spine I know we’re only supposed to fight in self-defense-”

“Murder if frowned upon in general.” The Spine replied before Rabbit could even finish. Bruce looked over at Tony, though it was hard to tell whether the look was ‘stop riling the robot up’ or ‘can you believe we have to work with these?’. Tony decided to take it to be the later because that was how he was feeling.

The jet was waiting for them right where they left it. The two robots had become oddly quiet at one point during the walk, though they kept sharing looks with each other that made Tony narrow his eyes. 

“Why don’t you two make yourselves comfortable somewhere while Bruce and I make sure this thing is working.” Tony said and then walked into the cockpit before they could answer. Bruce followed after him, and Tony shut the door behind Bruce.

“This thing flies on autopilot.” Bruce said, letting Tony know right away that he knew something was up. Tony expected as much. 

“Listen, I’m all for thinking on my feet, but I think we need to talk about the wonder twins out there.” Tony sat down in one of the chairs, flicking on the autopilot and kicking his feet up onto the dashboard.

“You’re not going to suggest we leave them, or drop them out of the jet, are you?” Bruce asked with a raised eyebrow, sitting down in the second chair. “I have a feeling that wouldn’t go well with Six, and I have another feeling that he’d end up sending the robots after the tesseract anyway.” Bruce got his own personal opinions down quickly.

“Here’s what worries me: Walter Robotics is a company, and I think they’re going to try and take the tesseract for themselves.” Tony said. 

“Why would they need it though? They clearly have two - if not three - robots already running on tesseract energy.” Bruce pointed out.

“Maybe they want to make more? I mean, is it so crazy to think that Walter I had the tesseract, made the three robots, and then lost it before he could complete his army?” Tony suggested. Bruce started to slowly nod, but then shook his head.

“No, no that wouldn’t be right. For one thing, the energy coming from Walter Manor is at least on par with the tesseract itself, and even for a greedy person that’d be more than enough energy to make some truly dangerous weapons with. And I remember hearing - you remember around the time you stopped making weapons and it was all over the news?”

“Yes?” Tony cocked his head to the side. That was a bit of a lie. There had been a lot of things going on at the time, so it wasn’t like he’d paid much attention to the press around that time, and all of that was eventually overshadowed by the whole Ironman thing.

“Well, a lot of them kept comparing it how back in the 70’s Walter Robotics did something similar where they abruptly announced they wouldn’t be making weapons anymore.” Bruce recalled.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re not still making secret weapons. People can lie Bruce, it happens.” Tony reminded him and Bruce rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Tony, I’m aware of that. But have you considered that maybe Six is actually just worried about people?” Bruce posed the question and Tony mulled it over for all of five seconds.

“Doubt it. He’s a businessman. They’re all the same.” Tony said.

“And what about you?” 

Tony didn’t reply.

He wasn’t sure whether to refute or not.

oOo

The Helicarrier was a nice and pristine place - plane? Building? - and it grates on Steve’s nerves. 

For as big as it was, it also had a certain claustrophobic feeling it carried with it, that came with the knowledge that there was no easy or simple way off of it. It probably didn’t help that Steve had this weird association of planes and crashing. The temperature of the place was just cool enough that Steve squirmed uncomfortably. He’d found that he had a certain dislike for the cold these days. 

The looming demigod also did not help.

Thor stood off to the side, eying everybody like they were the enemy and not his crazy brother. 

The moment of action in Stuttgart had passed quickly, and now Steve was getting antsy again. The tesseract was still out there, and without Dr. Banner to start the search again, there wasn’t anything they could do. Steve had attempted some conversation with Thor, but the demigod seemed to not be in the mood for talking. Natasha seemed to be in a similar state of not wanting to talk. She kept looking out the windows when she thought nobody was looking and rubbing her arm. It reminded Steve a bit of how Peggy got right before he left, how she’d said she was worried for him and had a bad feeling. 

Maybe he should have heeded her warning.

Maybe he should find out if Natasha had a warning she was holding back.

Before Steve could do that, however, his phone pinged. It was Tony telling them that they were almost to the Helicarrier, to get ready, and that he’d brought some ‘guests’, which quotes actually around the word guests. Wordlessly, Steve, Natasha, and Fury headed towards the landing dock of the helicarrier.

The jet touched down smoothly, not with the jarring impact that Thor had had when he’d made his entrance. Steve, Natasha, and Fury stayed just inside of the doors of the helicarrier, none of them wanting to bother with oxygen masks that would be needed to walk out into the thin air. The forms of Tony and Dr. Banner were easy to make out as they got out of the jet, and then two other figures following behind them. There were waves of anger coming off of Fury, clearly displeased that Tony had brought some people back with him when it was only supposed to be a reconnaissance mission to make sure whatever had been in California wasn’t going to become a problem while they dealt with the whole tesseract debacle.

“Alright, I can see you’re mad, but would it help if you knew I was too?” Tony said as soon as he was inside of the helicarrier, taking off his oxygen mask. Bruce took off his as well. The other two did not take off their oxygen masks. They weren’t wearing ones to begin with. They didn’t need one. 

They were both robots. 

And oddly enough, Fury didn’t seem quite as angry when he saw them.

“Steve, Natasha, bring them up to speed.” Fury instructed and left. 

The silver robot was looking Steve and Natasha over, then shook his head to himself - and then jerked his head suddenly, looking over at the other robot. She hadn’t taken his eyes - or uh, photoreceptors? - off of Steve, staring at him intently, taking in every detail of his face. 

“Steve?” The robot said a whisper, and then she took a hesitant step forward. “Steve R-rogers?” 

“Yes?” Steve nodded slowly. 

The robot threw herself into him, hugging him tightly tightly. Steve was caught by surprise, but reciprocated, which seemed to make her hug him closer.

“I can’t believe you’re a-alive! You should be dead! Or really really o-o-old! How’d you do it? How are you still alive? St-steve!” 

Steve pulled back from the robot, holding her at arm's length so that he could get a better look at her. She wasn’t the same as she had been, all the way back in world war II, but her core was in the same place it’d always been, and she had the same kind of grin as she grinned at him, oil dripping down from her eyes. 

“Rabbit?!” Steve asked, not needing it to be answered, and this time he initiated the hug. 

“Captain Rogers, good to finally meet you.” The other robot tipped his hat to Steve. 

“The… Spine, right?” Steve had never met the Spine in person, but he’d heard a lot about him from Rabbit. 

“Wait, you know them?” Tony asked, breaking up the sweet reunion. 

“Rabbit was one of the Howling Commandos.” Steve explained. 

“Rabbit and Spine, you said?” Natasha stepped forward, a hand held out for a shake that the Spine took and gave a kiss to. Rabbit reluctantly let go of Steve and shook Natasha’s hand. “What brings you two all the way up here?” 

“Blue matter.” Rabbit said, and a shiver went through her metallic frame. Steve narrowed his eyes at that, reaching for a shield that he didn’t have on him. 

“What is it?” Steve looked around. Rabbit pointed in a direction.

“There’s something that w-way.” She said.

“Blue matter? You mean the tesseract?” Natasha asked for clarification. Behind the robots Tony groaned.

“Ugh, trust me, they won’t-”

“Father theorized it was what held space together, and all evidence collected so far has proved that theory to be right.” The Spine said. “Blue matter can be extremely dangerous when messed with, so Rabbit and I are going make sure this core or whatever it is gets placed somewhere safe.” 

“It sounds like you and Bruce have a lot more debriefing to do than Natasha and I.” Steve said. 

“Yeah, we should probably explain a bit about what we found.” Bruce agreed. 

As they walked to somewhere more comfortable to hash out the details, Steve looked in the direction Rabbit had pointed. It was towards the cell that Loki was being kept in. 

Next to Steve, Natasha rubbed her arm again. 


	6. Helicarrier Mishaps

Natasha was apparently the only person who hadn’t heard about Walter’s Singing Automatons. 

The explanations went like this:

Natasha explained that while she and Steve had apprehended Loki in Germany, he did not have the tesseract, which either meant there was something wrong with Bruce’s calculations, Loki had found a way to trick their sensors, or the simplest answer that it had just been moved sometime between their meet up in Stark Tower and their arrival in Germany. She also shared that it had seemed too easy, and felt much more like Loki was right where he wanted to be. 

(Natasha didn’t share that being around the man made a shiver go up her spine and her hair stand on end, like there was an electrical charge in the room.)

Tony and Bruce took turns sharing their story of going to the mansion, finding out it was the home to one of Stark Industries rivals, and that instead of getting answers, they’d been tossed out with the two robots. Tony also took out Bruce’s tesseract geiger counter and pointed it to the two robots, which both had off the charts readings, and Bruce had explained his theory about them both being run off of miniature tesseracts. The robots only said that they were run off of blue matter, and Natasha got the distinct impression that neither robot was entirely sure what the tesseract was.

The robots explained that they were here to ensure the blue matter was stable and somewhere safe and not in the wrong hands. Tony posed the rather pointed question of why in the hands of Walter Robotics was the right hands, and the robot known as Rabbit had told him where to stick his opinion. The robot known as the Spine had agreed. 

Steve had then been prompted to explain his connection to the Rabbit robot, which had made Steve launch into a small story about how Rabbit had been involved in WWII - and the Spine had added that  _ he  _ was  _ also  _ in WWII, just in the air force - and had become a member of the Howling Commandos, but due to the US Military seeing the robot as more gun than person, no records of her work ever made it to any kind of official records. Steve had also shared how Rabbit had been so integral fighting the Nazi’s considering how she seemed to be able to almost track them down, and that if Rabbit was saying there was something dangerous and pointing in the direction of Loki, they need to take the threat seriously, even if he was in a glass jar right now.

That was around where things started to go badly.

Bruce was allowed access to the SHIELD computers as he worked on tracking the tesseract radiation again, and supposedly stumbled across weapon plans. How exactly that worked, Natasha wasn’t sure, and she had a feeling it wasn’t as accidental as Bruce had claimed it to be. At any rate, the blueprints very clearly showed that the weapons were designed to run off of tesseract energy, and the two robots - to put it lightly - went ballistic. 

“No, you can’t just, you can’t j-j-just  _ do that!”  _ Rabbit screamed, stomping a foot on the ground as she stared at the projection of weapons hoving in the middle of the air. 

“None of  _ us  _ are in charge of this!” Tony pointed out. “God, Bruce, can you get Fury in here? We have some things to talk about.” 

“I didn’t sign up for this.” Steve glared at the projection. “I didn’t sign up for making weapons! Why would we even need something of this kind of caliber?” 

“Thor.” Bruce said. He’s staring into space, clearly lost in thought, eyes darting around as if putting together a puzzle only he could see. 

“Me?” The supposed Norse god had been standing off to the side of the room, not bothering to partake in the conversation and seeming more bored and amused than he was interested in what they were saying up until that point. 

“You,” Bruce repeated, with a bit more force, looking at Thor like he was looking at him for the first time, “You were something way above their paygrade when you came along. SHIELD must think we need to get ready for a whole new kind of war.” 

“But this isn’t the way to go about it!” The Spine gestured angrily at the projection. Both he and Rabbit were emitting increasing amounts of steam, their anger literally running hot. 

“I didn’t say it was.” Bruce said, a sharp edge to his voice like he was only just stopping himself from snapping at the automatons. “I said that SHIELD was.” 

“This isn’t going to be a defense,” Thor finally stopped leaning against the wall and joined the circle, a feeling of claustrophobia filling the room. Natasha could feel it running across her skin, trying to get under it. “This is a signal to my kind and others like me that you’re ready for a new kind of war.” 

“I’m not getting wrapped into another war, not if I can stop it now.” Steve stated, arms folded, glaring at Tony.

“Hey, cool it Star Spangled Man, you think I’m a part of this?” Tony took a step towards Steve, hand on his hips, expression turning into a scowl to match the cold glare Steve was giving him. 

“I don’t know. You could’ve been working with SHIELD this whole time. Stop making weapons for the government and start making them for somebody who’s going to pay you way more.” Steve accused. 

“You want to try me?” Tony said it lowly, almost quietly, a challenge and a threat in one. 

“I think a better question is do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” Steve replied. 

“I-I can’t b-b-be a part of this-this if you’re going to j-j-j-just use blue matter recklessly like this!” Rabbit said with a venom. There was a clicking sound from her, and the Spine put a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head minutely. Rabbit stomped her foot again.

“You think I want to be a part of this?” Bruce asked, but it wasn’t clear who he was asking. “I’m already a walking time bomb, the last thing I want to do is aid in the production of them. And with this kind of power…” Bruce trailed off. There’s that distant look on his face again, and another shiver runs up and down Natasha’s spine, her hairs standing on end. 

“Steve, step away fr-from the doctor.” Rabbit grabbed Steve’s arm and pulled him away from his face off with Tony to get him farther from Bruce. She made a series of mechanical clicks and whirls that were almost melodic, and the Spine made a series of zips of whirrs in kind. He looked from Rabbit to Bruce and back. 

“Bruce,” Natasha started, but Bruce shook his head, a smile that held no mirth on his face. 

“If you say ‘calm down’... I have my ‘condition’ under control, thanks.” Bruce said bitterly, angrily. The Spine made more musically beeps, louder this time, loud enough that the others in the room are starting to notice, the arguments tappering off in an attempt to listen in on whatever was going on between the automatons. Rabbit responded again, and then back to the Spine, and then they overlapped and both got progressively louder as they tried to overlap each other until-

“JINX!” Rabbit shouted, grinning triumphantly. “You owe m-me a soda!” 

“You know that’ll short-curcuit you - or worse!” The Spine reprimanded. 

“Sounds like Six’s problem!” Rabbit stuck her tongue out. 

“Care to share what that was all about?” Tony asked. Even Steve didn’t seem to know what had just happened between the two robots. 

“Right, what w-w-we were talking about-t. There’s something c-c-oming from that-that staff.” Rabbit finally said. 

Natasha blinked, directing her gaze to the staff sitting on one of the counters in the room. Loki’s staff, to be specific. The one he’d been weidling when they’d apprehended him. It didn’t particularly  _ look  _ like there was something happening with it, or that it’s doing anything other than sitting there, but Natasha was all too familiar with how deceiving looks can be. 

“What makes you say that?” Tony asked, folding his arms. Even if the staff wasn’t doing anything, Natasha had to give the robots credit. If their plan had been to stop the fighting before it got out of control, they’d done so rather masterfully by becoming huge distractions. 

“I’ve picked up on some kind of energy being emitted by the staff. It doesn’t seem to have any sort of effect on Rabbit or me, but I believe it’s had some kind of effect on all of you.” The Spine explained. 

Before anything else could be said on the matter, the entire helicarrier was rocked by an explosion.

oOo

The helicarrier shook, the lights in the room flashed red, and a high-pitched shriek of an alarm rang through the room. 

The Spine’s legs repositioned themselves automatically, shifting around to keep himself from falling down. That was mostly a secondary objective as he bursts through the firewall of the helicarrier, not bothering to be subtle or cover his tracks or worry about what he might’ve damaged on his way in. He could feel Rabbit's presence, entering the system right behind him and gathering mostly the same information as he did before backing out, both leaving a small bit of themselves behind, tapped into any new news. 

“What-” Stark said but the Spine easily and quickly talks over him, speaking louder than both him and the emergency siren. He’s half expecting to be turned on to standby mode by Bebop, but this isn’t something so mundane.

“There’s been a kind of power burst on one of the helicarrier turbines. It currently isn’t spinning and they’re having trouble getting it going again. Right now they’re suspecting sabotage - a plane recently landed here that wasn’t scheduled.” The Spine clued them in on what was going on. 

Next to him, Rabbit wobbled on her feet, a wobble that had nothing to do with current shaking and unsteadiness of the ground. One of her hands went to her chest, and she didn’t bother to voice what was going on in English, chirps and beeps and clicks translating just fine on their own to the Spine. 

An insistence that she was fine, that it just felt heavy in here, and that there were other separate ‘heavinesses’ all around the helicarrier. During the fighting, she hadn’t noticed, but now she was all too aware of them. 

“Loki must have backup here for him,” Romanov said, looking a bit frustrated - the most emotion she’s displayed the entire time that Rabbit and the Spine have been here, “How did we not see this coming? We knew he must not be working alone!” 

“Our judgement was a little- ugh, a little clouded.” Banner sounded like he was trying his best not to throw up. And looked kind of like it too. In fact, he looked green around the gills in a very very literal way that the Spine was fairly sure humans weren’t supposed to look. Then again, Rabbit did get pretty green, and they were made to look like humans… no, no the Spine is positive that that wasn’t normal. 

“You’re not going to go all Jolly Green on us, are you?” Stark asked. He was grabbing some thing out from underneath one of the tables. It was red and gold and the Spine could make out a faceplate, like it was some kind of deconstructed robot under there. Steve had also moved, pulling open a drawing and taking a huge circular shield out from it that the Spine recognized immediately as Captain America’s iconic emblem. 

“N-no,” Banner said in the most uncomforting tone as he continued to sway where he was standing, shaking his head and holding the table for balance, “I just need a moment to… to get a…” Banner trailed off and that also wasn’t very comforting. He didn’t seem to be getting any less green, but he was also not getting any more green, so the Spine supposed that had to account for something.

“Alright, you stay here and don’t break anything. I’m going to go see what I can do about that turbine.” The metallic plates of armor sprang to life and snapped together with minimal help from Stark until he was entirely encased in it.

Not that it truly mattered, but the Ironman really paled in comparison to the Spine and his fellow automatons, if you asked him. 

“I’ll go with you.” Steve volunteered. Even though the mask was blocking Stark’s face, the confusion was palpable. Steve shook his head. “This is more important than any personal grudge.” 

“I c-c-can lead some of us to the i-intruders.” Rabbit volunteered. She was tapping into the security cameras as she spoke, and that second sense for finding trouble she always seemed to have was finally coming in handy. 

“I can go.” Romanov stepped over to Rabbit and the two of them nodded to each other. 

“I’ll… lay down.” Banner said, doing just that and taking deep and calming breaths. 

“And Thor-” Steve started, but cut himself off when the demigod was nowhere to be seen. 

“I’m on it.” The Spine said, quickly hunting Thor down through the security cameras. Heading towards where they were holding his brother. 

Of course. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk if i've mentioned this but its been years since i've seen this movie and no easy way to watch it again, so be prepared for a lot of plot points to be skewed n stuff


	7. Chapter 7

“C-c’mon, this way.” 

Natasha followed behind the robot as they made their way through the helicarrier, tracking down and taking out the rogue soldiers. Natasha had known that there were people at the lab where the tesseract had been being held that had gone missing. She’d assumed they’d been taken hostage by Loki, or killed in a way that didn’t leave a corpse behind. But these people on the helicarrier, causing havoc and mayhem, aren’t just dressed in SHIELD uniforms. They are members of SHIELD.

Natasha was fairly sure she was starting to understand how Rabbit was tracking down the intruders. This must be what Steve had meant, how the automaton had been so instrumental in tracking down the Nazi’s. For one thing, Rabbit knew her way around the ship unerringly, which Natasha attributed to some kind of robot thing and not to the familiarity that Natasha was able to rely on. And then there was the feeling that grew stronger the closer they got to any of the intruders. 

A shiver ran up Natasha’s spine, a feeling of not quite unease but definitely not ease washing over her like waves on a shore. Whatever it was, Natasha was willing to bet that Rabbit could feel it to - however much a robot can ‘feel’ things - and that that was how she was hunting them. They were being non-lethal for now, but Natasha wasn’t afraid to use more force if any of their enemies proved to be more of a challenge. Everytime one of them was knocked out, the weird feeling dimmed a bit. It wasn’t the first time Natasha had noticed a feeling like this before, but it was the first time in a long that that she’d paid such close attention to it. 

Rabbit seemed to be fairly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, though whether or not it could still be called hand-to-hand when those hands are pure metal isn’t clear. 

The two of them make quick work of two other rouge agents, catching them by surprise and two swift hits to the head knocking them out.

“We should split up.” Natasha said as Rabbit stood, eyes staring into space as some other part of her focused on something that Natasha couldn’t see. 

“Are y-you sure?” Rabbit stuttered, eyes refocusing as she started to take off down another hall. She wasn’t like Natasha, who walked with quiet footsteps, melting with the shadows. Rabbit’s footsteps were heavy, vibrating the metal floor, and if there wasn’t so much chaos already going on Natasha knew it’d be a dead giveaway for the automaton approaching.

“Yes, I know I’ll be able find them on my own.” Natasha said. Rabbit didn’t look back at Natasha, but Natasha didn’t miss how one of the security cameras swiveled around to get a good and clear shot of her face. 

“Alright. I’ll get the one-one north of here, you g-g-go south. If you need any help, j-j-just say the wo-ord.” Rabbit told her. Natasha wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that the robot from an entirely different group had seemingly managed to take over so much control of the helicarrier with so little effort, but for now they were on the same side and the spy had far more important things to be worried about. 

oOo

The Spine ran down the hall after Thor. He wasn’t as fast as the god - hell, he’s not as fast as the Jon - but he knows in his core that something bad is going to go down. Well, something worse than is currently going down. He doesn’t know it like how Rabbit knows things, where she describes a pressure, or like their sparks dancing through her wires, or she can taste something in the air. He knows something is about to go terribly terribly wrong because when you’ve been around for over a hundred years, you pick up on things like this and learn how to trust your gut, even if you don’t strictly have what humans would consider a gut. 

The helicarrier was constantly shaking and tilting, barely able to stay aloft - or at least, aloft in a way it was supposed to be - without that forth turbine there. The Spine searched through video records until he could see Steve and Tony hashing out a plan to fix that and let them deal with it. He didn’t so much as pause in his running. The layout of the ship was unfamiliar, and even with the floorplans downloaded, he made a wrong turn as he tried to keep track of both where he was and where Thor was. That is, until he realized that all he needed to know was where Loki was being kept and go there.

He arrived too late.

There was a man who had also caught on to what was going on, who had made a B-line to the cell, and who was now collapsed on the ground, breaths becoming shallower and shallower. Thor had been tricked by Loki, trapped in the prison that had once held the god. Loki stood smugly before him, somehow once more holding the staff though the Spine had no clue how he’d been so fast to go grab it and then return here before Thor had come. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. 

“NO!” The Spine shouted as Loki hit a switch on the panel before the cell, releasing it from the helicarrier to fall to the Earth. He tore through coding and firewalls, but still he was too slow. The protection around everything to do with the cell was like the rest of the protections on the helicarrier but dialed up to eleven, just hard enough that the Spine was too slow, unable to do anything about the signal sent out. 

And now he had caught the attention of Loki.

“And who do we have here?” The man practically purred as he slowly turned, in no rush, so totally assured that he had already beat the only being that stood even the slightest chance against him.

The plates of metal on the Spine’s arm shifted as the locks that kept his tesla coil from activating accidently came undone. He had brought his spines in when he had Rabbit had boarded the ship in an effort to make them look a little less like threats, but now they snap out, each one giving off a jet of steam. 

Before the Spine can make a move, though, the man bleeding out beats him to it. 

The bolt of energy shoots out of the man’s gun, hitting Loki square in the chest and taking both him and the Spine by surprise. Whatever the gun was, it was huge and definitely packed the kind of punch you’d expect of something its size. Loki was sent flying through the air, crashing into a wall. The Spine almost went after him, but he saw how the man with the gun wasn’t moving, unable to move, breaths barely existent now.

For all the wars that the Spine had been in, he’s been a search-and-rescue robot for much more time than he’d been an actual fighting soldier. It’s barely a decision.

“Sir, are you alright?” The Spine asked even though he knew they answer to be most definitely a no. The man didn’t respond. “Don’t worry, I’m going to help you.”

Doing his best not to shift the man around too much, the Spine reached a hand behind to where he’d seen the man get stabbed. The sensors along his fingertips and palm detected the blood, far too much blood, and he responded accordingly. The metal of his hand became red-hot in a matter of seconds. He didn’t have long, not with Loki already getting back to his feet, he had no choice but to cauterize it. The man gave a pained moan, but he lacked the energy to even really scream in pain. That was assuming that the man wasn’t some kind of super soldier who had long ago gotten rid of his reaction to pain being to scream. 

The Spine was fairly certain that was the deal with the Black Widow woman.

“You aren’t human.” Loki said. He was walking slowly towards the Spine, still not looking bothered. The Spine slowly got back to his feet, readying himself for a fight. Loki’s eyes are a bright bright blue, terrifying in their coldness, and the Spine’s face shifted into a snarl. “What are you?” 

“Where’s the blue matter?” The Spine said instead of answering. 

“The blue matter?” Loki repeated. His eyes flicked around the Spine’s features, taking him in, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. “My, you truly are something, aren’t you?” 

The spear moved towards the Spine, more like Loki was pointing rather than stabbing, but the Spine didn’t wait for it to get to him, grabbing it with his tesla coil arm and sending a surge of electricity along it. Loki shouted in pain, letting go of the spear, and the Spine threw it across the room, closing the distance between himself and the supposed god so he could grab the man’s arm and send another bolt of electricity through him. Enough to incapacitate a normal human.

He should’ve known it wouldn’t be enough. 

Loki flinched badly at the attack, but recovered faster than the Spine had been prepared for, grabbing the Spine and throwing him into one of the walls. In the time it took the Spine to get back up, Loki ran across the room, grabbed his spear, and stabbed it into the Spine, getting dangerously close to his core, not only damaging him but pinning him to the wall. It went through his plating like a hot knife through butter. 

The god grinned at him, putting a hand on the automaton’s shoulder, eyes flickering green for a second.

“You really are something under all that metal. I can  _ feel  _ it. Yes, today is going to be a  _ very good day.”  _

The Spine had seen that kind of grin before, during the last war Five had promised they’d ever have to go through. 

And the Spine felt true unadulterated fear like he’d only felt a few times in his life.

oOo

It's like she's getting stabbed herself. 

The signal overrode the blaring alarms as they change from a ringing and constant sound into a strangled scream, like a man being gutted alive. It's like being electrocuted, it's like being torn apart. Rabbit's core linked to the Spine's and she knew what he was feeling what he was thinking, his agony and terror becoming her own. 

She stops in her tracks, steam pouring out of any gaps they could as she burns hotter, boiling over. 

He's too far away. 

She can't get to him. 

"THE SPINE!" Rabbit shouted, standing over the body of fallen enemies she had taken out. She could see him through the cameras, trapped, scared, processor recounting the last time he'd been trapped like this. The memories of Vietnam were impossible to get rid of.

He's too far away. 

Rabbit could only watch as Loki raised his staff and disappeared with her brother in tow.


	8. chapter uh seven i think - rabbit screams a lot

Rabbit was borderline inconsolable. 

Initially, things had seemed, if not fine, better than expected for being ambushed at their own base. Bruce had done his breathing exercises throughout the entire thing and had managed to keep his cool and not hulk out and cause some extra damage to the helicarrier. Steve had been able to help out Tony with getting the fourth turbine up and running, and even though things looked a little rough there at the end, Tony was back in the helicarrier in one piece. Natasha, though she wasn’t currently in the room with all the others, had checked in and reported that one of the more notable missing agents - Agent Barton - had been found and was now in a holding cell until he woke up. Most of the others they’d been fighting were low-level grunts, and the missing scientist was nowhere to be seen.

However, Loki had gotten free, disappeared with some of ‘his’ men, and taken the Spine along with him.

Hence, the inconsolable Rabbit. 

“Can somebody get her under control?” Director Fury grumbled, arms crossed and staring at the robot. 

“Rabbit,” Steve said, hands put out in front of him placatingly. 

“I’m PERFECTLY un-un-un-under control th-th-th-th-thanks-s-s-s!” Rabbit screamed. Her right arm was no longer an arm, but a chainsaw that was currently spinning in an extremely deadly way that Steve had seen in action before and knew just how dangerous she was with it. She had it pointed to Bruce as he tapped away at one of the computers, looking rather calm under the circumstances. Steve knew that Rabbit didn’t kill people - not a single recorded kill in her entire time with the Howling Commandos - but Bruce probably wasn’t aware of that. 

“If I can’t find the tesseract-” Bruce started up his argument again, but Rabbit quickly cut him off.

“B-b-b-but it’s the-the-the-the SPINE, n-n-not some-some dumb c-c-c-c-cube!” Rabbit growled. There was currently no way out of the room, because Rabbit had shut all of the doors and no amount of overrides had been effective so far. 

Tony was currently working on it from another computer, because Rabbit could only really keep one person hostage at once, and had described the current predicament as Rabbit having cut the entire room off the helicarrier’s normal system. The current system controlling the room was what Tony had guessed was some kind of amalgamation of Rabbit’s own systems and the helicarrier’s own system. Not that he was having an easy time, because Rabbit kept booting him out of the system and then he had to continually hack back in. 

“I’m going to have to ask you to stand down before you do something you’re going to regret and I do something that I can assure you I  _ won’t _ .” Director Fury said, voice low and dangerous, clearly done playing around. 

“I don’t th-th-th-think you’re-you’re aware what-what- _ what-what-WHAT-”  _ Rabbit’s ‘whats’ cut off into a horrible screech, like a bunch of feedback, not dissimilar to the sound that had rung all throughout the helicarrier right before Loki had gotten away. 

“Rabbit,” Steve said and took another step towards the automaton. She made another strangled sound, and looked at Steve. Her eyes were glowing bright bright bright and there was a worrying amount of steam coming from almost every single gap in her metal plating. 

“He-he-he… he’s sc-sc-sc-sc-scared-d-d-d.” Rabbit said, much quieter than before. Her voice was fizzling, fuzzy, and then all at once the fight seemed to have left her as dark black oil pours from her eyes and she falls to her knees. Her chainsaw hand stops spinning, though it doesn’t go back to being an arm, and Steve knows his cue to step forward and kneel down and throw his arms around his old friend again. 

“Rabbit, we’ll find him.” Steve promised. “But you have to work  _ with  _ us.” 

Rabbit made some clicking and chirping sounds that were, oddly enough, distinctly displeased. She wiped at her eyes and stood back up, the metal of her arm shifting around until it resembled human once more. 

“S-sorry I thr-r-reatened you.” Rabbit mumbled, like a kid being forced to apologize for making fun of somebody they saw at a store. She was facing Bruce, but she wasn’t looking at him, and one of her hands was holding onto Steve’s. 

“It’s not the first time it’s happened. First time by a robot, though.” Bruce replied. Rabbit didn’t say anything back, just tilted her head to the side as she continued to clean up oily tears that still came from her eyes. A moment later, Tony made a triumphant sound and the doors to the roomed opened once more. 

“Got it!” Tony cheered. 

“You d-d-didn’t have anything-g. I j-just let g-g-g-go.” Rabbit sniffed. Tony glared at the robot. 

“Remind me why we’re keeping this thing around after it just  _ proved  _ it’s highly unstable?” Tony asked. 

“I’ll show-show you unstable!” Rabbit growled again, shoulders rising and teeth bared. Steve squeezed her hand and she backed down, though she clearly wasn’t happy about it. 

“Because, whether either of you like it or not, Rabbit was on to something, and the Spine getting captured might just be a blessing in disguise.” 

This time, Steve had to actually restrain Rabbit, who looked like she was about to try and decapitate Director Fury where he stood. 

“TH-TH-THAT’S MY BR-BROTHER YOU-YOU-YOU-” Rabbit didn’t seem able to decide what exactly Director Fury was and just made another set of loud beepings and whirrs.

“How do you figure?” Bruce asked Director Fury, still cool as a cucumber. Other than Rabbit, everybody else in the room seemed to have much clearer heads now that the spear was gone, meaning the two robots had probably been right about that. 

“I figure Rabbit here must have some way to find out where the Spine is. You are known for your  _ search and rescue,  _ aren’t you? And if we can find the Spine, we’ll find Loki.” Director Fury summarized. “Get to it, men.” And on that note, Director Fury spun around and strode out of the room. 

“I st-still need to have a word-word with him about his-his weapon-n-n-ns,” Rabbit grumbled, “B-but the Spine comes f-f-first.” 

“You have  _ got  _ to be kidding me.” Tony said rather bluntly. “It was seconds away from killing Bruce, and now we’re just going to let it keep doing whatever it was doing?” 

“Director Fury made a great point,” Bruce reminded Tony and then looked back at Rabbit, “Do you have a way we can track him that isn’t just the tesseract radiation tracking you were having me do?”

“If I c-could do that, don’t y-y-you think I would’ve already?” Rabbit asked. 

“There’s got to be something you can do.” Bruce insisted. 

“You don’t have any kind of wireless communication?” Steve asked. Rabbit shook her head. 

“We h-have wireless, but it-it only works sh-sh-short distance.” Rabbit explained. “Well, unless…”

“That unless sounds pretty promising.” Steve said. Rabbit shook out her chainsaw hand and then, tilting her head to the side, hand in almost a first with her thumb to her ear and pinky to her mouth, said,

“Hey, Five, you there?”

“Oh good, she does improv too.” Tony threw his hands up into the air. “Bruce, just start tracking the tesseract again, we’re clearly getting nowhere with this thing.”

“Yeah, it’s, uh… I l-l-lost the Spine?” Rabbit said. Steve raised his eyebrows and stepped away from Rabbit, watching her… talk on the phone? Steve hadn’t seen her do that before, but then again there had been plenty of time in the past few decades for her to get upgrade. She held her hand away from her face as a loud sound came from her hand, loud enough to make out, 

_ “YOU WHAT?!” _

“You can’t just call the Spine?” Bruce asked. Despite Tony’s request, it was clear that Bruce did have faith in Rabbit being of some help, and was watching her in curiosity. She put her other hand over her pinky, shaking her head at Bruce.

“It’s complicated, and-and I’m on the phone, if you c-c-c-could please quiet d-d-down.” Rabbit put her hand once more up to her head, “Yeah, I’m st-still here. Yes, one s-sec.” 

Rabbit dropped her hand completely and stepped back.

The lights of the room dim, Bruce and Tony’s holo-screens turn off, and one in front of Rabbit turns on. 

There’s a man on the other side. He’s old and wrinkly, with deep lines in his face, and many of those lines and made even deeper by the worry that is very very clear on his face as he stares at Rabbit through the screen, eyes flitting around as he takes her in. 

_ “What happened?! Where are you?! Tell me everything! Are you okay, Rabbit?”  _

“Who’s this?” Tony asked before Rabbit could say anything. Rabbit made another set of upset clanking melodic sounds and the old man’s face smooths for the barest of seconds as he laughs. 

_ “Don’t be so vulgar, Rabbit! You didn’t tell me you had company over. Of course, let me introduce myself, and apologize for anything Rabbit has done and will do. I can assure you, she’s always like that.”  _ The old man said. 

“Trust me, I know.” Steve said, the first of the other three to get in front of the screen and where the man would be able to see him. 

_ “Is that- are you actually Captain Rodgers?”  _ The old man gaped and Steve put on his best heroic grin. 

“I am, sir.” He said.

_ “I had your lunch box!”  _ The old man said, then slapped his hands over his mouth, blushing in embarrassment and looking like a tomato. Rabbit cackled and slowly the man removed his hands from his mouth to defend himself by adding,  _ “It was mostly because it bothered my uncle. He kept trying to give me his merchandise.” _

“You had posters all over-er you room.” Rabbit reminded him and the hands were over the man’s face again. 

“Who was this, again?” Tony asked pointedly. The man cleared his throat, face still very red, but he was able to compose himself again. 

_ “Yes, I promised an introduction. Right. I am Peter A. Walter the Fifth, former head of Walter Robotics. You can just call me Peter or Five, either is just fine. And who are you fine gentlemen?”  _

“I”m Bruce Banner.” Bruce introduced himself, and Peter nodded.

“And I’m Tony Stark, head of Stark Industries, and your son didn’t tell you that he just gave us your robots on a borderline whim?” Tony asked, clearly not impressed with the title drop. 

_ “Six.”  _ Five said, and then louder, looking off screen,  _ “SIX, GET IN HERE!” _

“It was god-aliens.” Rabbit said. “God aliens have access to blue matter and then shady secret governments made-made by people I used to be friends with want to use it to m-m-make weapons.” 

_ “They want to do what with the blue matter?!”  _ Five said in sync with a much younger looking man who came onto the camera. The similarities between the two were clear, in the young man’s nose and face shape and Steve didn’t need anybody to tell him that the young man was ‘Six’ and also the man’s son or grandson.

“Make weapons!” Rabbit repeated. 

“Which we are  _ also  _ against.” Tony reminded everybody in the room, glaring both at Rabbit and then at Steve, who put his hands up in surrender. 

“Hey, I believe you now, okay?” Steve said and Tony rolled his eyes. 

_ “I sent the automatons to get the blue matter and make sure it gets taken care of.”  _ Six explained to Five. Five nodded. 

_ “So then what happened to the Spine?” _

_ “Something happened to the Spine?!”  _ Six turned to stare at Rabbit who nodded. 

“The god-aliens took h-him.”

_ “I wish I was more surprised than I am.”  _ Six lamented. Five, meanwhile, was staring at a spot in his desk, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, and was shaking slightly. 

_ “I promised myself-” _

“You c-can’t keep us s-s-safe from anything!” Rabbit quickly said, “We just need to know if-if, y’know, after l-last time, you did something so that-that we can find him.” 

_ “That’d be a bit of a-”  _ Six started and then Five made a grunt that cut him off _ , “Dad, no.” _

_ “I was twenty-six and paranoid, of course I put a secret tracking device in them!”  _ Five said. 

_ “Dad, their privacy!”  _

_ “I needed something that would let me sleep at night again, and that was one of them!” _


End file.
